Budding strength shines through a ten-week-old salmon as it breaksfree of its
embryonic membrane. Forseveral more weeks it lives off its yolk sac, then rises to
eat microscopicplants and larvae. Turning silver two to four years later, it heads
downstream, developing a tolerancefor salt water as it enters the sea.
small brown trout but are much more ag
gressive, leaping clear of the water to glut
themselves on insects. I've seen a three-inch
fish impale itself on an artificial fly as long
as it was, jumping without effort, carrying
the heavy line and hook.
When salmon turn silver, at about six
inches, they are ready for the sea. Known as
smolts, they travel downriver and school in
tidal pools before disappearing forever, or
until ready to return to renew the species.
Odds are terrible against newborn Atlan
tic salmon making it through the cycle, even
to return as grilse, fish of between three and
six pounds that have spent only one winter at
sea. Young salmon are food for many pred
ators: trout, eels, mergansers, herons, otters,
mink. At sea salmon often travel thousands
of miles, to Greenland and the Faroe Islands
(map, following page). Though some, like
most Icelandic salmon, remain closer to
home, they aren't free from predation. Of
every 7,500 eggs hatched, perhaps 50 salm
on survive to the smolt stage, four to return
to a river, two of them to spawn.
"Man is the most relentless predator,"
Richard Buck, chairman of Restoration of
Atlantic Salmon in America, said to me.
Dick spearheaded a successful international
effort to curb high-seas fishing off Green
land, after commercial interests discovered
the salmon's feeding grounds there in the
late 1950s. Now Dick is devoting his efforts
to helping secure a multilateral treaty that
would protect Atlantic salmon from ocean
overkill anywhere.
Despite Problems, a Little Hope
"Conservation that limits kill isn't
enough," he said. "The decline of salmon
has gone too far. Conservation must be ex
tended; that means restoration. You can't
dam rivers and have salmon. You can't pol
lute rivers and have salmon. You can't
poach rivers and have salmon. Hatcheries
help some, but where do you get stock for all
the hatcheries? Even cleaning up the rivers
won't help unless we convince dammers to
build fish ladders. Clean water doesn't mean
anything to salmon unless they can get to it."
Can the Atlantic Salmon Survive?
609